Firing line

Friday, 3 November 2017

Long time no post - apologies for that, still patiently waiting for the next set of sculpts from Andy Stadden.
However the good news is that my booking for Salute 2018 is confirmed, now whilst a lot of debate takes place about the format of Salute to a small trader like me its business critical, a good day usually lets me plan and pay for the next 20-30 figures in the range.
so the planning starts now! cash flow is critical so early planning is essential, in addition I shall be offering the usual pre.order for collection and to make it more attractive over £60 will give a 15% discount over a £120 a 20% so it's certainly worth considering and I hope to have quite a few new releases out in time as well.

On other things the French army continues to grow, Regiment Foix joins the ranks
painted by Steve Allen and based etc by moi.

Sunday, 1 October 2017

I'm pleased to say that the Early French Hussars (with the exception of the horse holders) are now available and are in the shop.
These are all sculpted/converted by Andy Stadden.
Mounted hussar and command and the dismounted Hussars skirmishing together with command so a great add on.
The Hussars will also come with the new light/medium horses we have licensed.
In addition there's a couple of British Mounted Officers which have been much wanted and a couple of French Officers which are minor conversions from the Savoia Officers.

Also coming soon is the Mule train! the loads are not cast on the mules to allow for variation and the Savoia mountain gun will be coming shortly both assembled and deployed and as a load for the mules.

Tuesday, 8 August 2017

Whilst the hussars are being cast and Andy is on with the next set of sculpts I received from Steve my two units of Fusiliers de Morliere - Cavalry and Infantry.
I have to paint the horses for the cavalry but in the meantime here's a couple of pics of the infantry -
they've already been in their first engagement and performed exceedingly well.

Thursday, 20 July 2017

Andy Stadden has come up trumps with the early hussars both mounted and dismounted.
There are also two horse holders to come.
The pictures aren't the best but hopefully gives you a feel. There's also the picture of the two British mounted Officers and there are also two French mounted Officers.
These have gone off to Griffin for the master moulds but production wont be far behind.

There's more figures coming soon including the Georgia Rangers for the '45 range.

Thursday, 22 June 2017

I have just sent off figures for seven production moulds to be made at Griffin. There are figures for a further 8 moulds so its going to be ab busy summer.

The figures that have gone are the marching Spanish Infantry, the Savoia mounted Officers, the French dragoon, the early French Hussar, British Horse ( command and trooper) and the French artillery - I'm doing two four figure packs for these one pack of the crew serving the gun and a pack of the pushing/pulling figures as I think these will be useful for other things - some nice vignettes?

Pictures below - apologies for the quality the light was just too strong!

Tuesday, 30 May 2017

First up is a real 'special' John Ray who's wonderful collection
graces the A Military Gentleman Book, blog and Forum very kindly
sculpted an early French Hussar for the range
The figure looks comfortable on both standing and galloping horses and I'm sure this will be a must want figure.

Unfortunately Richard Ansell continues to be unavailable due to
ongoing family issues, to that end I have sought the services of Andy
Stadden son of Charles to help out.

The first set of releases he has done are primarily conversions but more pieces are coming.
So we have the French artillery crew and the British Horse

I think you will agree he has done a good job.

Finally John Dougan continues his work on the War in Italy the Spanish Infantry marching is making his way to me, pack mules etc are already at Griffin and expect to see a mountain gun coming soon as well.

Monday, 22 May 2017

For a change rather than take the trade stand I chose to put on a demo game under the Crann Tara banner, in reality I've been doing demo games at Partizan since Newark Irregulars started holding wargame shows!!!

Anyway the day was filled with lots of jaw, jaw and not enough war war but you really need around 5 people to run a successful demo game and engage with the public at the same time, it most probably saved the French army from an embarrassing defeat. We were using Honours of War rules as they were the common denominator between us, however the French C in C threw three 1's in succession for his right flank commanders and ended up with 3 dithering commanders who for the first half the game only reluctantly crept forward at a very slow and uncoordinated pace.

So a big thankyou to all those who stopped for a chat, friends and strangers alike and for all the positive comments received and to those people who still haven't seen or heard of the range of figures - its a hard life being a figure producer against the big boys :)